In case you missed it, the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT) will meet on Tuesday at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California.  Cabinet-level officials will discuss a number of irritants in the trade relationship, including intellectual property right protection, product safety, and investment barriers.

While the issue of China's currency, the yuan, will be raised, the actual value of the yuan is unlikely to be raised at all.  And China's massive energy subsidies ($27 billion since it entered the WTO) for its steel producers will likely survive the talks.  And that gets to the core of the challenge with these talks.  Few, if any, objective criteria are established, and no consequences result from a failure to make progress.  We're fairly certain that Beijing would love to keep these talks, as well as the Strategic Economic Dialogue, going indefinitely, since they rarely result in breakthroughs.  Our hope at ManufactureThis is that the next Administration will pursue a results-based approached.